Have you ever had a "moment" when a beautiful truth crashes in on you?

I just had a moment. The background of this moment is two-fold: first, I was pondering today all the onslaughts against faith in our culture. When it comes to the promotion of the anti-God mindset, there are scads of books being written, music published, and movie and TV portrayals that serve to agitate us, as our faith is attacked again and again. If it's not The Da Vinci Code it's The Golden Compass. Or it's the writings of a Harris, a Dawkins, or a Hitchens. I read a glowing tribute to the movie It's a Wonderful Life a while ago (and that's one of my favorite movies), and, apropos of almost nothing, the author of the tribute said that he believed people would be watching that movie long after Christianity is forgotten.

Stuff like that.

Second, tonight I read this, as I studied for the lesson I'm teaching tomorrow:

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." - John 1:5

This is, of course, in the context of John's soaring, epic, beautiful first chapter in which he speaks of the great Word of God, Jesus Christ, our light and our life. I've read that verse 1,000 times, but tonight I read it anew.

The Light shines. It still shines! It will always shine. What have we to fear? This Light is Jesus. This is Jesus we're talking about here. The darkness does not understand Him and is opposed to Him, but it will never overcome Him.

The gates of hell will not stand, there is no blasphemy that will prevail, and all predictions of the Light's imminent demise are grossly exaggerated.

Jesus is the Lord. He is the Victor. He is our life, and He will always be so. And there's nothing anyone can do about that. Selah and Amen times a million.

This moment of mine reminded me of a paragraph from one of the greatest works of fiction of all time. I'll leave it with you here, because I think the author of this passage also was thinking of the true Light, which will never be defeated:

Then, at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeking among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King